The Overcoming of Suffering

Nietzsche and Buddhism:  The Overcoming of Suffering



“The world is full of suffering; it is also full of overcoming it.”

—Helen Keller



After a naval jet malfunctioned and crashed into a home killing his wife, two children, and mother-in-law in San Diego on December 8, 2008, Dong Yun Yoon expressed his concern for the jet’s pilot.  “Please pray for him not to suffer for this accident,” Yoon said to reporters at the site of the crash where he lost four members of his family, including his two children, ages two and fifteen months (CNN).  This is a reminder that for all the accomplishments of mankind, the problem of suffering still proves to be the biggest challenge people face.  While medical science is almost entirely devoted to it’s alleviation on both the physiological and psychological level, the bulk of philosophy and religion has also been long preoccupied with the problem of suffering and its solution.  Both western thought and eastern tradition have contributed greatly to the subject, and it is from these two groups that may be found two distinct approaches to the problem of suffering, that of Friedrich Nietzsche and that of the Buddhist tradition.  These two approaches are distinct insofar as they differ not only from the widely held Christian view of suffering, but also in that they differ from each other.  While Nietzsche represents a western philosophical approach, Buddhism represents an eastern (and primarily) religious approach.  While Nietzsche never denounces Buddhism to the extent he denounces Christianity, Nietzsche and Buddha differ in how they each attempt to define suffering and what they see as its cause and solution.  A discussion of how they differ may begin with a look at the First Noble Truth. 

The First Noble Truth in Buddhism is that “life is dukkha” (Smith 99).  Translated as suffering, it is to the Buddhist a natural condition of life, and as Nietzsche suggests, it is not (therefore) interpreted “in terms of sin” (Nietzsche, The Antichrist 23).  To live means to suffer, for the world in which people live is not perfect and neither are people, themselves.  According to this truth,  “birth is suffering, ageing is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and …pain…and despair are suffering, association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering” (Novak 65).  Furthermore, there are five skandas, or life components, which are painful and not limited to physiological suffering, but also include psychological suffering.  These are the body, sensations, thoughts, feelings, and consciousness (Smith 102).

While Nietzsche recognizes the existence of suffering as a hard truth in much the same way as Buddhism, Nietzsche does not attempt to specify or categorize the various instances and conditions under which suffering occurs.  In fact, what constitutes as suffering seems to be secondary to the simple acknowledgement that suffering exists and where this is concerned, Nietzsche applauds Buddhism’s honesty and objectivity.  For, where Christianity threatens to destroy “man’s sense of causality” (Nietzsche, The Antichrist 49) by blaming the devil and sin for people’s suffering, Buddhism does not.  Instead of speaking of a “struggle with sin,” Nietzsche observes, the Buddhist speaks of a “struggle with suffering” (Nietzsche, The Antichrist 20).  Buddhism, Nietzsche further asserts, does not have to justify pain and man’s susceptibility to suffering.  “It simply says, as it simply thinks,” “I suffer” (Nietzsche, The Antichrist 23).  Therefore, it would seem that at least in regards to the first noble truth, Nietzsche’s philosophy does not differ significantly from the Buddhist’s.  Only when one considers that Nietzsche’s view of suffering may be that it is something which a person lacks, as in lacking good health, does one consider that there may be a slight differentiation.  This differentiation isn’t entirely evident, however, without a look at what Buddhism and Nietzsche each suggest as to the cause or origin of suffering. 

To the Buddhist, the cause or origin of life’s suffering is tanha, or desire.  It can be defined as the “desire for private fulfillment” as Smith proposes (102) or as the craving and clinging to all things transient, such as physical objects, ideas, and all objects of perception.  “As a noble truth, the origin of suffering is the craving that produces renewal of being” (Novak 65).  Because the objects of desire are transient, their loss is inevitable and leads to suffering.  The self is also considered an object of attachment, in that the idea of a “self” is a delusion.  As Smith suggests, “When we are selfless, we are free,” (102) and so it follows that to attain selflessness is to attain freedom, and the freedom from suffering is the goal to which the Buddhist strives.

Nietzsche asserts that the greatest causes of suffering for the individual are “that men do not share all knowledge in common, that ultimate insight can never be certain, that abilities are divided unequally” (Nietzsche, Untimely 212).  The primary characteristic one may notice about Nietzsche’s causes of suffering are that they are expressed in the negative; that is, they refer to what men do not have and can not have.  In effect, they refer to that which is lacking.  Now, if one refers again to what Buddhism claims to be the origin of suffering, one notices that it is a result of what is, namely tanha, not what is lacking.  More precisely, Buddhism doesn’t blame suffering on a lack of something, but instead sees it as the desire for what one lacks and/or cannot have.  This is crucial to Buddhism, for desire is what one needs to overcome if one is to overcome suffering.  The self, too, must be overcome in order to overcome suffering and in this respect, the self seems almost as much to blame for suffering as desire is to blame.  Certainly, this is unexpected considering the former assertion that Buddhism sees suffering as a natural condition of life.  Instead of placing the blame on something that exists apart from the self, the blame is placed on something that exists within the self.  This can be easily justified, however, when one is reminded that while the world isn’t perfect, people aren’t perfect either and are just as much to blame for their suffering as any external condition.  It should be noted, furthermore, that where Nietzsche differs from the Buddhist they are much the same in that they both see that what people lack, and therefore what people desire, is a state of being.  As Kaufmann points out:

“We have ideals of perfection which we generally find ourselves unable to attain.  We recognize norms and standards of which we usually fall short; we long for a triumph over old age, suffering, and death; we yearn for perfection and immortality—and seem incapable of fulfillment.  We desire to be “as gods,” but we cannot be so.” (254) 

These “ontological” privations, as they are, lead to “ontological” interests (Kaufmann 254) and whereas Nietzsche’s philosophy doesn’t seem to differ too much from Buddhist tradition in this respect, it does differ in regards to a solution.

The Buddhist’s solution to the problem of suffering has to do with eliminating the cause or origin of suffering.  This means that to overcome suffering, one must first overcome tanha, or desire, and the attachment and clinging to all things transient.  The idea of the self, which is an illusion, is one such attachment that must be let go if one is to overcome suffering.  To accomplish this goal, Buddhists practice the Eightfold Path.  The goal, life’s goal, is Nirvana, which Buddha characterized as “Bliss, yes bliss, my friends, is nirvana” (Smith 114).       

Nietzsche declared that “Buddhism is not a religion in which perfection is merely an object of aspiration:  perfection is actually normal—” (Nietzsche, The Antichrist 21).  And yet, as just discussed, for the Buddhist to aspire to perfection or desire it would put him/her at odds with its attainment.  Interestingly, Nietzsche proposes a different solution to suffering and takes his cue from the Greeks.  He declared, “To be able to live, the Greeks had to create gods out of the most profound need” (Kaufmann 130), and to him they did this best in their tragedies.  In his mind, the Greek tragedies represent “a yet unbroken reply to the vicissitudes of fortune, a triumphant response to suffering, and a celebration of life” (Kaufmann 130-131), which he describes as “at bottom, in spite of all the alterations of appearances, indestructible, powerful, and joyous” (Kaufmann 131).  For Nietzsche, “artistic creation is prompted by something which the artist lacks, by suffering rather than undisturbed good health” (Kaufmann 130).  For him, the Greek “has looked with bold eyes into the dreadful destructive turmoil of so-called world-history as well as into the cruelty of nature and, without yielding to a resignation or to ‘a Buddhistic negation of the will,’ reaffirms life with the creation of works of art” (Kaufmann 131).  In “Beyond Good and Evil,” he furthers the point:

“The discipline of suffering, of great suffering—do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far?  That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, persevering, interpreting, and exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness—was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?”  (344; ch. 225)

And so, while the Buddhist seeks a lack of desire in order to attain what is desired, Nietzsche postulates that the answer to attaining what one lacks is to desire it.  He insists, Kaufmann says, that one must “employ” his impulses and not weaken or destroy them (225).  “He believed that a man without impulses could not do the good or create the beautiful any more than the castrated man could beget children” (Kaufmann 224).

Central to Nietzsche’s thought is his concept of the “will to power,” which he sees as the one pervading force.  “The will to power is the heir of Dionysus and Apollo.  It is a ceaseless striving, but it has an inherent capacity to give form to itself” (Kaufmann 238).  It is best represented, as Nietzsche sees it, in the creative power of the artist and since it affirms the ego rather than denying it, it seems to be the complete opposite solution to what Buddhism teaches.  Kaufmann acknowledges this in the following passage:   

“It might finally be urged that the conception of happiness as a triumph over suffering, and especially the idealization of creative power, is characteristic at best of western civilization only.  While it is impossible to offer any extended discussion of other civilizations here, Hinduism and Buddhism cannot be ignored entirely:  for on the face of it, the conception of happiness—in the sense here assigned to this word—as either Nirvana or a union of Atman and Brahma seems the very antithesis of Nietzsche’s apotheosis of creativity. (276)

When one looks beyond “the face of it,” however, one sees that:

“What the ascetic, including even the Buddha, wants is not power that is of this world, power over men, or power over many countries, but cosmic power, world-shaking power—power even over the gods.” (277)

However, “the truly powerful need not escape into any Nirvana: they can win triumph in this world and be creative” (Kaufmann 277).  For, “Nirvana is not ultimate happiness but a substitute desired by some of the weak who are incapable of achieving that state of joyous power which they, too, would prefer if they had the strength to attain it” (Kaufmann 279). 

In conclusion, Nietzsche and Buddhism share fundamental similarities in that they both acknowledge suffering as a natural part of existence and they both understand that a lack of fulfillment and the desire for fulfillment is what leads to suffering.  However, while Buddhism attempts to overcome suffering by negating the desire for fulfillment, Nietzsche argues that suffering can be overcome by striving and living to the fullest, by creating, rather than by destroying the will, by choosing life over the destruction of life.  Furthermore, Nietzsche thinks that even the Buddhist, apart from the very rare exception of the life-negating Buddhist, is not successful in overcoming the ego and the idea of self.  The Buddhist is not successful, because, the Buddhist still is guided by the will to power in that ultimately, the Buddhist seeks power over life itself.     









Works Cited





Kaufmann, Walter.  Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist.  Princeton,

         New Jersey.  Princeton University Press.  1974.



Lewis, Jone Johnson.  Wisdom Quotes.  http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_suffering.html



“Man Who Lost Family When Jet Hit House:  I Don’t Blame Pilot.”  CNN.com. 

10 Dec. 2008.  http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/09/military.jet.crash/index.html?iref=newssearch&n...



Nietzsche, Friedrich.  The Antichrist.  Trans.  H.L. Mencken. New York.

         Alfred A. Knopf. 1918. 

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm

         Beyond Good and Evil.  Trans.  Walter Kaufmann.  New York.

         The Modern Library.  1992.

         Untimely Meditations.  Trans.  R.J. Hollingdale.  Cambridge University

Press.  1997.



Novak, Philip.  The World’s Wisdom.  HarperSanFrancisco. 1995.



Smith, Huston. The World’s Religions.  HarperSanFrancisco. 1961.